Quietly, she left his room and shut the door. In the hallway, she passed her mother, and for a split second, when their pain-filled gazes met, Nina reached out.
Mom lurched away from Nina’s hand and went into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.
There it was. The whole of her childhood repeated in a too-quiet hallway. The worst part was, Nina knew better.
Her mother was not a woman one reached out to.
Meredith and Jeff met the girls at the train station that night. It was a subdued homecoming, full of sad looks and unspoken words, not what it should have been at all.
“How’s Grandpa?” Jillian asked when the car doors shut and they were all together in the quiet.
Meredith wanted to lie, but it was too late to protect them. “Not good,” she said quietly. “He’ll be glad to see you, though.”
Maddy’s eyes filled with tears. Of course they did; her youngest daughter had always been the emotional one. No one laughed louder or cried harder than Maddy. “Can we see him tonight?”
“Of course, honey. He’s waiting for us. And your aunt Nina is here, too.”
Maddy smiled at that, but it wasn’t her real smile; it was a tattered version of it. “Cool.”
And somehow, with all of it, that quiet, subdued cool hurt Meredith most of all. In it was the change that was coming, the grief that would reconfigure their family. Maddy and Jillian adored Nina. Usually they treated her like a rock star.
But now it was just that quiet, whispered cool.
“Maybe he should see another specialist,” Jillian said. Her voice was soft and calm, and in it Meredith heard an echo of the doctor her daughter would someday become. Steady and collected. That was Jillian.
“He’s seen several really good doctors,” Jeff said. He waited a minute, let those words sink in, and then he started the car.
Usually, they would have talked and laughed and told stories on the drive, and once at home they would have gathered around the kitchen table for a game of hearts or in the living room to watch a movie.
Tonight, though, the drive was quiet. The girls tried to make conversation, told dull stories about classes and sorority rules and even the weather, but their words had trouble rising above the pall that hung in the car.
At Belye Nochi, they went into the house and made their way up the narrow stairway to the second floor. At the top of the stairs, Meredith turned to them and almost warned them that he looked ill. But that was what a mother did with young children. Instead, with a little nod, she opened the door and led the way into the bedroom. “Hey, Dad. Look who is here to see you.”
Nina was sitting on the stone hearth, her back to a bright orange fire. At their entrance, she stood. “These can’t be my nieces,” she said, but her usual booming laugh was gone.
She went to the girls, hugged them tightly. Then she hugged her brother-in-law.
“Your grandfather has been waiting for you two,” Mom said, rising from her place in the rocking chair by the window. “As have I.”
Meredith wondered if she was the only one who heard the change in her mother’s voice when she spoke to the girls.
It had always been like that. Mom was as warm to her granddaughters as she was cold to her daughters. For years it had wounded Meredith, that obvious preference for Jillian and Maddy, but in the end she’d been grateful that her mother made the girls feel cared for.
The girls took turns hugging their grandmother and then turned to face the big four-poster bed.
In it, Dad lay motionless, his face startlingly pale, his smile unsteady.
“My granddaughters,” he said quietly. Meredith could see how affected they were by the sight of him. For the whole of their lives he’d been like one of the apple trees on this property. Sturdy and dependable.
Jillian was the first to lean down and kiss him. “Hey, Grandpa.”
Maddy’s eyes were damp. She reached over for her sister’s hand and held it. When she opened her mouth to say something, no words came out.
Dad reached up a mottled, shaking hand and pressed it to her cheek. “No crying, princess.”
Maddy wiped her eyes and nodded.
Dad tried to sit up. Meredith went to his bedside to help him. She fluffed and arranged the pillows behind him.
Coughing hard, he said, “We’re all here.” Then he looked at Mom. “It’s time, Anya.”
“No,” Mom said evenly.
“You promised,” he said.
Meredith felt something swirling about the room like smoke. She glanced at Nina, who nodded. So she felt it, too.
“Now,” Dad said with a sternness that Meredith had never heard before.
Mom folded beneath that command, just sank into the rocking chair.
Meredith barely had time to process the stunning capitulation when her father spoke again.
“Your mother has agreed to tell us one of her fairy tales. After all these years. Like she used to.”
He looked at Mom; his smile was so loving it broke Meredith’s heart to see. “The peasant girl and the prince, I think. That was always my favorite one.”
“No,” Meredith said—or maybe she just thought it. She took a step back from the bed.
Nina crossed the room and sat down on the floor at Mom’s feet, just as she’d done years ago. As they’d both done.
“Here, Mad,” Nina said, patting the floor. “Come sit by me.”
Jeff was the next to move. He chose the big armchair by the fireplace and Jillian snuggled in alongside him. Only Meredith had yet to move, and she couldn’t seem to make her legs work. For decades she’d told herself that her mother’s fairy tales meant nothing; now she had to admit what a lie that had been. She’d loved hearing those stories, and during the telling, she’d accidentally loved her mother. That was the truth about why Meredith had stopped listening. It hurt too much.
“Sit . . . Meredoodle,” Dad said gently, and at the nickname, she felt her resistance give way. Woodenly, she crossed the room and sat on the Oriental rug, as far away from her mother as possible.
In the rocking chair, Mom sat very still, her gnarled hands tented in her lap. “Her name is Vera and she is a poor peasant girl. A nobody. Not that she knows this, of course. No one so young can know such a thing. She is fifteen years old and she lives in the Snow Kingdom, an enchanted land that now is rotting from within. Evil has come to the kingdom; he is a dark, angry knight who wants to destroy it all.”
Meredith felt a chill move through her. She remembered suddenly how it once had been: Mom would come into their room at night and tell them wondrous tales of stone hearts and frozen trees and cranes who swallowed starlight. Always in the dark. Her voice was magic back then, as it was now. It would bring them all together for a time, but in the morning, those bonds would be gone, the stories never spoken of.
“He moves like a virus, this knight; by the time the villagers begin to see the truth, it is too late. The infection is already there; winter snow turns a terrible purplish black, puddles in the street grow tentacles and pull unwary travelers down into the muck, trees argue among themselves and stop bearing fruit. The fair villagers can do nothing to stop this evil. They love their kingdom and are the kind of people who
keep their heads down to avoid danger. Vera does not understand this. How can she, at her age? She knows only that the Snow Kingdom is a part of her, like the soles of her feet or the palms of her hands. On this night, for some reason she cannot name, she wakes at midnight and gets out of bed quietly, so as not to waken her sister, and she goes to her bedroom window, opening it wide. From here, she can see all the way to the bridge. In June, when the air smells of flowers, and the night itself is as brief as the brush of a butterfly’s wing, she cannot help imagining her own bright future.
It is the time of white nights, when at its darkest the sky is a deep, royal purple smattered with stars. In these months, the streets are never quiet. At all hours, villagers gather on the streets; lovers walk across the bridge. Courtiers leave the cafés very late, drunk on mead and sunlight.
But as she is breathing in the summer night, she hears her parents arguing in the other room. Vera knows she should not listen, but she cannot help herself. She tiptoes to the chamber door, pushing it open just a crack. Her mother stands by the fire, wringing her hands as she looks up at Papa.
“You cannot keep doing these things, Petyr. It is too dangerous. The Black Knight’s power is growing. Every night, it seems, we hear of villagers who are turned to smoke.”
“You cannot ask me to do this.”
“I do ask you. I do. Write what the Black Knight tells you to. They are just words.”
“Just words?”
“Petyr,” her mother says, crying now, and that frightens Vera; never has she heard her mother weep. “I am afraid for you.” And then, even more softly, “I am afraid of you.”
He takes her in his arms. “I am careful, always.”
Vera closes the door, confused by what she has heard. She does not understand all of it, or perhaps even part of it, but she knows that her strong mother is afraid, and that is something she has never seen before.
But Papa will never let anything bad happen to them. . . .
She means to ask her mother about the argument the next day, but when she wakens, the sun is shining and she forgets all about it. Instead, she rushes outside.
Her beloved kingdom is in bloom and so is she. How can anything be bad when the sun shines?
She is so happy that even taking her younger sister to the park doesn’t bother her.
“Vera, look! Watch me!” twelve-year-old Olga calls out to her, launching into a series of cartwheels.
“Nice,” Vera says to her sister, but in truth she is barely watching. She leans back into the bench and tilts her chin upward to the sun, closing her eyes. After a long, cold winter, this heat feels wonderful on her face.
“Two roses do I bring to thee.”
Vera opens her eyes slowly and finds herself looking up at the most handsome boy she has ever seen.
Prince Aleksandr. Every girl recognizes his face.
His clothes are perfectly made and decorated in golden beads. Behind him stands a gleaming white carriage, drawn by four white horses. And in his hand, two roses.
She responds with the poem’s next line, grateful that her father has made her read so much.
“You are young to know poetry,” he says, and she can tell that he is impressed. “Who are you?”
She straightens, sitting up, hoping he notices her new br**sts. “Veronika. And I am not that young.”
“Really? I’ll wager your father would not let you go walking with me.”
“I don’t need anyone’s permission to go out, Your Highness,” she lies, feeling her cheeks redden.
He laughs, and it is a sound like music.
“Well, then, Veronika, I will see you tonight. At eleven o’clock. Where shall I find you?”
Eleven o’clock. She is supposed to be in bed by then. But she cannot say that. Perhaps she can feign an illness and put blankets in her place in bed and climb out the window. And she will need some kind of magic to find a dress worthy of a prince. Surely he will not want to go walking with a poor peasant girl in a worn linen gown. Perhaps she can sneak over to the Alakee Swamp, where the witches sell love for the price of a finger. At that, her glance shoots to her sister, who has noticed the prince and is walking this way.